Luís de Camões quotes - page 3
O what devouring kisses (multiplied)
What pretty whimperings, did the grove repeat!
What flattering force! What anger which did chide
Itself, and laughed when it began to threat!
What more than this the blushing Morning spied,
And Venus (adding hers to the Noon's heat)
Is better tried, than guessed, I must confess:
But those who cannot try it, let them guess.
Luís de Camões
Ah, Dinamene,
Thou hast forsaken him
Whose love for thee has never ceased,
And no more will he behold thee on this earth!
How early didst thou deem life of little worth!
I found thee
- Alas, to lose thee all too soon!
How strong, how cruel the waves!
Thou canst not ever know
My longing and my grief!
Did cold death still thy voice
Or didst thou of thyself
Draw the sable veil before thy lovely face?
O sea, O sky, O fate obscure!
To live without thee, Dinamene, avails me not.
Luís de Camões
O, how I choke in uttering my disgrace!
Thinking I her embraced whom I did seek,
A mountain hard I found I did embrace.
Overgrown with trees and bushes nothing sleek.
Thus (grappling with a mountain face to face,
Which I stood pressing for her angel's cheek)
I was no man: no but a stupid block
And grew unto a rock another rock.
Luís de Camões
A scene so solemn, and the tender woe
Of parting friends, constrained my tears to flow.
To weigh our anchors from our native shore-
To dare new oceans never dared before-
Perhaps to see my native coast no more-
Forgive, O king, if as a man I feel,
I bear no bosom of obdurate steel.
(The godlike hero here suppressed the sigh,
And wiped the tear-drop from his manly eye...
Luís de Camões
As long as Fortune wanted me
to keep on hoping for happiness
I took pleasure in amorous thoughts
and wrote down how they made me feel.
But Love, afraid that what I write
might serve free hearts as a warning,
clouded my inspiration with torment
to keep his deceits from coming to light.
O you whom Love has made the slaves
of various passions! When you read
in one small book such varied cases
know that they're pure truths, not tales,
and that your own experience in love
will lead you through my verses' meaning.
Luís de Camões